Books in Feb.

So very, very many things I would like to post on, but I'll keep this post to books and then tonight I can probably post on some concerts/theatre I have seen or am going to see soon.

I just wrapped up the core of Gogol's Dead Souls (Book One in the Guerney and Reavey translations).

I should get through Book Two fairly soon, though I will also see what Rayfield (NYRB) came up with for his reconstruction of Book Two.  I find it an interesting and often amusing book, though not really a great novel.  I find it intriguing that Gogol originally thought this was be the equivalent of Dante's Inferno and that he was working out how to get Chichikov through Purgatory and into Paradise.  Maybe not so much should be made of an offhand remark, but it doesn't make much sense.  Perhaps if Chichikov ended up in prison midway through Book One and really suffered, the analogy would make more sense.  But in fact, the most that really happens is he is scorned by the townspeople and he leaves town.  Not really a dramatic escape...  (There's some film or sitcom that makes fun of an author who invests his or her stories with no dramatic tension.  It's just at the tip of my tongue.  Hopefully, it will come back to me.)

I bailed on Kingsley Amis's Take a Girl Like You about 100 pages in. There were many reasons, but essentially every male in the story was a pretty detestable wolf, always on the make.  

And the female lead seemed to have nothing on her mind more than Cosmo quizzes, i.e. what can I do to make the boys like me (but drawing the line at putting out). It was a pretty dreary battle of the sexes, told by a male author with almost zero insight into the way actual women think.  I simply couldn't care less whether Patrick got into Jenny's pants or not (and apparently according to those who did read to the end he more or less forces himself on her -- this is a book that I don't care if I've spoiled it).  I was reminded of Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek, where I was completely uninterested in the main characters and their on-and-off romance, but the secondary characters and plots were interesting, but there was none of that here.

I have decided (probably unwisely) to give Kingsley yet another chance, and am a few pages into Girl, 20.  It's shorter at least, and there is a bit more distancing with the narrator a bit more disgusted at the main character's hankering after younger and younger girls.  Still, I find myself wondering why Kingsley Amis was so popular and often considered one of the better novelists of his generation.  He really does nothing for me, and I'll probably get rid of his remaining works on my shelves (I guess mostly The Old Devils, which is probably somewhat misanthropic but hopefully less sexist).

Now this cover has way more of a Lolita vibe, which apparently is well-deserved.

I'm making good progress on Reuss's Horace Afoot.  I'll write about that separately.  I guess I'll just say that Reuss isn't afraid to make his lead character a bit of a jerk at times.

I've been waiting on Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur and getting a bit nervous about it having been lost in the mail.  It's going to be the next major novel I tackle.  I was about to write to the bookseller to see if there was any tracking info.  Anyway, I just got a delivery slip, so I have to pick up a package from the post office, possibly because I owe some custom duties.  I think it either has to be Siege or maybe Salgado's Africa.  As much as I want the Farrell novel, I'd probably rather it turns out to be the Salgado, which will be considerably harder to replace.  

And with that, I really do need to get going.  Ciao!